06/9/15

The Secret Russian Role in Global Conflict

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

In an extraordinary judgment that throws U.S. policy in the Middle East into complete turmoil, strategic analyst Michael Ledeen has concluded, in regard to the activities of the Islamic State, “I think the Russians are involved, in tandem with the Iranians, who have had their own troops on the Syrian battlefield for years.”

This means that a U.S. congressional declaration of war on the Islamic State would miss the point, and that the Russians and the Iranians are the bigger threat.

“It’s part of the global war, of which Syria is only one killing field, and IS [Islamic State] is one of the band of killers,” says Ledeen.

The analysis of Ledeen, who previously served as a consultant to the National Security Council, the State Department, and the Defense Department, should serve as an opportunity to review what is really happening in the Middle East, and to examine whether the Islamic State is a Russian creation that is designed to pave the way for Iranian expansion.

Ledeen notes evidence that the top IS military commander, Abu Omar al-Shishani, is a Russian asset, and that “the Russians are exploiting their strategic position in Ukraine to set up transit facilities for IS.” He adds that Ukrainian security forces recently arrested five IS volunteers coming from Russia or the former Soviet republics.

Last September we reported on some of this evidence, noting, “We have heard repeatedly about Americans and Europeans fighting for ISIL [the Islamic state], but little attention is being devoted to the Russian-speaking foreign fighters that make up the group. Their numbers are estimated at 500 or more. Omar al-Shishani is usually described as a prominent Islamic State fighter who is Chechen. In fact, he was born in the former Soviet republic of Georgia and was trained there.”

Those who believe the Russians are incapable of such deception and misdirection have conveniently forgotten about the history of the old Soviet intelligence service, the KGB. It is represented in the Kremlin today by Russian President Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer once based in East Germany.

In another area of global affairs that reveals a hidden Russian role, The New York Times has taken note in a June 7 story of evidence that the Russians under Putin are financing conservative movements and political parties around the world. The Times reports, “Not only is it [the Kremlin] aligning itself with the leftists traditionally affiliated with Moscow since the Cold War, but it is making common cause with far-right forces rebelling against the rise of the European Union that are sympathetic to Mr. Putin’s attack on what he calls the West’s moral decline.”

This is actually an old story. We have been reporting for more than a year about Putin acquiring agents of influence or dupes in the West, even in the United States. Perhaps the most prominent name associated with this pro-Moscow trend is veteran conservative columnist Patrick J. Buchanan. The World Congress of Families is the most prominent organization to embrace Moscow’s alleged devotion to Christian values.

It is quite natural for conservatives in favor of traditional values to abhor the Obama administration’s embrace of the so-called LGBT agenda, here and abroad. But to adore Putin in reaction to this trend is a major miscalculation that assumes Moscow is genuinely interested in preserving Western values.

It is a welcome development that The New York Times has finally taken note of Moscow’s hand in right-wing political movements.

But there’s more. The paper added, “American and European officials have accused Moscow of financing green movements in Europe to encourage protests against hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a move intended to defend Russia’s gas industry. And a shadowy ‘troll farm’ in St. Petersburg uses Twitter to plant fake stories about chemical spills or Ebola outbreaks in the West.”

Another example of how Putin is deceiving the world lies in his exploitation of Edward Snowden, the former NSA employee still being hailed as a whistleblower in the United States.

Buchanan’s magazine, The American Conservative, has written about how figures on the U.S. political right such as Ronald Reagan biographer Craig Shirley have rallied to Snowden’s defense. In a recent column, Shirley condemned “the senior GOP leadership’s embrace of the National Security Agency’s enveloping surveillance activities.”

What Shirley and other Snowden supporters ignore is the fact that the NSA’s surveillance activities rely mostly on a Ronald Reagan Executive Order (12333) and that funding and manpower for the NSA increased dramatically under Reagan.

In fact, President Reagan used the NSA to undermine America’s enemies, especially the old USSR.

National security reporter Bill Gertz wrote in 2013 about how a former “top-secret” document, “United States Cryptologic History, Series VI, Vol. 5: American Cryptology During the Cold War, 1945-89,” contained a section on how President Ronald Reagan realized the value of the NSA’s unique electronic intelligence collection capabilities.

The history notes that “the best known exposure of SIGINT [signals intelligence] since the Pearl Harbor hearings of 1945 had actually come in 1983, when the Reagan administration played the intercepted cockpit conversations of the Soviet pilot as he shot down KAL-007. The SIGINT gave the administration a tremendous foreign policy coup.”

On September 1, 1983, the Soviet Union shot down the civilian airliner KAL-007, killing 269 people.

In 1986, the document states, Reagan became the first American president to visit the NSA, as he gave the official dedication speech for the NSA’s two new buildings. He wanted to loosen “the legal reins governing intelligence,” the document says, giving rise to Reagan executive order 12333. It gave the NSA latitude in SIGINT collection that the agency had not had during the disastrous Carter years.

This executive order remains in effect. Not even Obama has tried to revoke it.

Based on this history, one would have to conclude that President Reagan would defend the NSA, just as the GOP leadership in the U.S. Senate has done. Leaders like Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) defended the NSA against the Obama administration, liberal Democrats and libertarian Republicans.

The tragedy is that, with Obama in office rather than a conservative like Reagan, some conservatives decided to join the campaign to undermine the agency that Reagan considered absolutely essential to America’s security and survival.

Could it be just a coincidence that the Islamic state, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and aggressive Chinese cyber-warfare against the U.S. have emerged as major problems in the wake of Snowden’s arrival in Moscow?

Those who blame Obama alone for all of our foreign policy setbacks should examine the evidence that Putin and the Russians may ultimately be pulling the strings. At the same time, the NSA can’t be blamed for Obama’s failure or unwillingness to use the agency effectively against our enemies.

When the next president takes office, he will need an NSA capable of gathering the intelligence information the nation needs to defend itself. The next administration will have to consider apprehending and then prosecuting Snowden for operating as a Russian/Chinese agent of influence and committing espionage against the United States.

Hopefully, those who defended or praised Snowden will one day have to answer for their foolishness.

01/18/15

A New Year: Why Mr President, Why?

By: Lloyd Marcus

Happy New Year my fellow Americans. Getting my butt back into the gym is my New Year Resolution. I saw a guy I thought was around my age who looked fantastic, very muscular. He said he was 57; his secret was protein and creatine supplements.

As I begin 2015, another year into the battle to save my country, I observe the daily news thinking, “Same old, same old.” President Obama continues to, in essence, give congress and American voters the finger; arrogantly governing unilaterally against the best interest, the will and protection of the American people.

My dear friend Victoria Jackson, former star of SNL has been deemed a nut case for calling Obama a Muslim and a communist. http://bit.ly/1C5Obta While I can not confirm whether or not Vickie and other pundits are correct in their assessment, clearly Obama is on a different page than those of us who love freedom and America.

The question which continues to nag millions of Americans is why does this man do what he does? Why Mr President, why?

Why did you bring Ebola to America? http://bit.ly/1wYJU7O Why do you refuse to place a travel ban into America from Ebola riddled countries? http://bit.ly/1xnXGQ9

After abdicating your responsibility to enforce immigration law, why did you sued Arizona for enforcing immigration law; leaving Arizonians open to attacks from immigration smugglers and violent Mexican drug cartels? http://reut.rs/1AP7Mi4

Why do you block border patrol officers from doing their job? http://bit.ly/1lPVv6J Why did you dis American voters by granting executive amnesty to five million illegals? http://fxn.ws/1r2B5aj

Why are you planning to give illegals social security numbers, opening the floodgates for them to claim any number of credits; rewarding them for entering our country illegally with checks written by American taxpayers? http://bit.ly/1C5VWzo

You once admitted that an influx of illegal immigrants will harm “the wages of blue-collar Americans” and “put strains on an already overburdened safety net.” http://bit.ly/1uCOrPF Why then would you implement an open border policy guaranteed to attract the poor from around the world; encouraging them to break our immigration laws and receive taxpayer funded handouts? http://yhoo.it/1508ZI6

Why have you forced schools across America to take in illegal students carrying various diseases? http://bit.ly/1BZD33i

Why did you refuse to call the shooting at Ft Hood a “terrorist attack” which blocked the victims and their families from receiving their entitled combat benefits? http://bit.ly/14UDTlK Why did you run to read the Boston bomber his Miranda rights which blocked interrogators from questioning him about other planned attacks on Americans? http://bit.ly/14yvFyB

Why did you join Al “scumbag” Sharpton and other race profiteers in furthering their insidious divisive hate-generating lie that America’s police target and murder blacks? http://bit.ly/1AZJOmS

Why did you lie to the American people on at least 29 occasions that if they like their health-care plan and their doctor they could keep them? http://bit.ly/1DXzBpn

Why did you attempt to bully the beautiful ministry of Little Sisters of the Poor, a 100 year old order of nuns to violate their faith by forcing them to sign a form supporting abortion services? http://bit.ly/1AOMv83

Why does your Obama care continue to cause millions to lose health care plans they like and Cancer patients losing their doctors credited with saving their lives? http://bit.ly/1BZBNwW

Why did you deny additional security requests at our consulate in Benghazi which lead to the death of U.S. Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans during a 9/11/2012 terrorist attack? http://bit.ly/14V4X4g Why did you order the Benghazi Annex security team to “stand down” rather than attempt to rescue our Ambassador? http://bit.ly/1DFlFTs

Why were military assets not deplored to defend our Benghazi consulate and save our Ambassador? http://tws.io/17GYomR

Why did you send Susan Rice on five national TV shows to knowingly lie to the American people, telling them that the Benghazi attack was caused by an anti-Muslim youtube video that was seen by hardly anyone? http://bit.ly/SbNnmb Why do you persist in claiming that the war on terror is over despite glaring worldwide evidence proving otherwise? http://fxn.ws/1IJB1Vk

Why did you choose to pass on attending the historic Paris, France rally in which 40 nations came together against Islamic extremism? http://bit.ly/1BZwxcQ Why do you refuse to admit that we are at war with radical Islam?

Why did you release five lethal Taliban terrorist leaders and continue to release other terrorists certain to reenter the battlefield to kill more Americans? http://bit.ly/S8lElp

Why did you demand that the name of Jesus be covered up on a stage before you spoke? And yet, you passionately defend Islam. http://lat.ms/14y9Ije Why did you offer a new asylum decree favoring Muslims over Christians? http://bit.ly/1hiVCmU

Why have you forcefully burdened our military with social engineering policies which critics say will undermine good order and discipline for decades? http://bit.ly/1DZIyOP

Why have you launched a war on coal estimated to cost nearly a quarter-million jobs per year and force plants across America to close? http://bit.ly/1yhWZfa

Why do you vow to Veto the Keystone XL oil pipeline bill which will further energy independence and create jobs for thousands of Americans? http://bit.ly/1AAIC98

Folks, cited in this article is only the tip of the iceberg of Obama’s war on America as founded: his attacks on traditional Americanism and Christian values – his unseemly attempts to divide us along racial lines to silence opposition to his overreaches – his thuggish use of government agencies to bully and intimidate Americans into submission http://bit.ly/1KKx9XS – his encouraging the sin of covetousness/class envy to divide Americans along economic lines – his attempts to addict as many Americans as possible to government dependency and his relentless efforts to diminish the worldwide influence of the United States of America.

Who are you Mr President? Why are you always on the wrong side of what is best for America and her people? What is your ultimate goal?

Many of us are scratching our heads, asking;…why Mr President, why?

Lloyd Marcus, The Unhyphenated American
Chairman, Conservative Campaign Committee